Fixing A Sprinkler Valve "Quick Fix," No Glue

[Music] this is Gary with Gary sprinkler repair service again and today I want to show you a quick video on how to repair a lawn sprinkler valve when you don't have all the tools necessary to cut the valve off and replace it with you know pipes and glue and all that stuff and you don't have the time for that you just want to do a quick easy homeowner replacement see if you can get it working so I'm going to show you an example that what kind of valve we're going to be dealing with today we're gonna use a Rain Bird valve and one cool thing about Rain Bird that a lot of people don't know is to do this we're literally going to swap the top on this side and we're gonna swap the top on the side closest to me here and so that one literally threads off and this one we have to take some screws off but this is we're going to swap the tops on the brand-new valve with the tops on the sprinkler valve that's already down in the ground and it needs to have it replaced because the valves leaking it won't shut off with the timer so it's just a quick easy repair for you as a homeowner so here's a good example of three sprinkler valves they're sitting here and let's assume this guy here on our left is our bad sprinkler valve and we want to replace the breaker lid here and when we want to replace the actual valve diaphragm then we're gonna go ahead and replace the entire top on it so first things first before you start taking anything apart one thing you need to do is I always recommend just turning your timer off that way there's no electricity going to the solenoid here and I'm even going to make this so simple that you don't even have to as long as you use the same valve you don't have to even do any wiring if you didn't want to you were just in a big hurry you wanted to do it quick and easy wanted to make sure you didn't mess with any wires or screw anything up just a fast easy way to do it so first thing we got to do down here as we can see we have a water shut-off that goes to the sprinkler valves so we want to go ahead and turn that to the off position so when a ball valve is perpendicular to the pipe here it is now off the next thing you want to do is come around they have a manual bleed screw on the valve go ahead and open that up about a quarter of a turn and that lets any water or pressure off the valves in the piping down here and in the valve so that you're not fighting water pressure once you're done with that you can go ahead and shut that off again that's also a good way to make sure that that gate valve works before you start taking screws out and find out that gave off doesn't work that maybe it's a broken gate valve or you have the kind that you have to turn the faucet knob and keep turning to shut one off and you find out that it's defective and you've already got the top off and now you've got a geyser so just make sure it's off you can either turn it on right here with the manual on/off to make sure that the valve doesn't start running if it does then it means your water is probably not off where you have a bad shutoff so but for today it works we just proved that the water is off so quick easy thing we're gonna do right now is sometimes these are loose enough this one is loose this is the breaker lid I'm gonna just lightly loosen it up and take the lid off now one thing I'm going to show you real quick gonna tap this against my leg here see if I can get the gasket to pop out guess I'd be looking over here it's still stuck on the valve so here's the gasket so a lot of times if you just check in your valve to see if you have a bad valve like in one of my other videos you muck the water out of the chamber and you see the water fill back up when you have that gate valve on so you know you have a bad valve if so and you're planning on reusing this you know don't lose it so we can then come over get our new valve and we're gonna go ahead and take the breaker lid off on that guy nice and easy make sure that my rubber o-ring goes with me and literally just set it on there and just nice and easy hand tight you saw I didn't get carried away we've already replaced half of the valve so the next step will be for me to take these six screws there's one two three four five and six over here we're gonna take those out but one thing I want to do just so I'm not fighting it is to have this electrical solenoid in my way so I'm gonna loosen that up a little bit okay and then once it's nice and loose I can take the little handle off the top just by snatching it off of there and then go ahead and just unscrew this on right off there's nothing that's gonna fall out or get in your way you can literally unscrew it there it is come over here and just set it over there get it out of your way now you can see all you got left to do is take a screwdriver and start going ahead and taking those six screws out and then we'll go from there okay so now I have taken the screwdriver and taking those six screws out and you can see I just gently lift this up off of here and I've got one that's hanging up just a little bit you just loosen it a little bit with your fingers looks like it's all the way out it's this guy all right that's problem solved tops off okay the next thing you want to do let's take your new valve and we're gonna do the same thing we're gonna take six screws out of that and we're gonna take top off one thing you can do here on this sprinkler valve this is supposed to be sitting down there just fell off didn't fly anymore but you're gonna go ahead and take your fingers and just kind of pry underneath the edges of this gasket and just start peeling it up so you can see what I'm doing here just kind of getting your fingers under the edge and start peeling it up one thing we want to look for is when we put the new one on so we want to make sure that this is where the bleed screw gaps towards the front it has like a double hole and it has two little pins on where it scoops supposed to go there so there you go you can see it's out and the defective diaphragm is out you can see this is the inside working part of your valve kind of cool to be able to look in there and check it out see what it looks like a lot of times I tell people take a second look in here make sure that there's not a piece of gravel or a piece of glue broke off this may be been sitting on this edge right here and preventing this diaphragm on the underside if you look at the underside preventing this edge you can see the kind of the impression it's made here that's the impression made against this ring right here so a lot of times you can look and you'll see a nice big dent in that and you look down here and lo and behold there'd be a little piece of bark or a little chunk of glue that broke off from the pipes and it's preventing this piece from sealing tight against that providing you get the the piece of glue out of there that was in the way and you don't have a dent you can see how this impression is going to the edge here long as that impression doesn't go beyond the edge to the you know like it stays in the middle but it's not out here on the edge you can reuse this diaphragm if for some reason that goes all the way to the edge then it's going to suck air through that even when it's pushed down sealed there's a channel for the air to come through so would work anyway let's go ahead and pull the top off our other new valve again I'm gonna pull the top the six screws out of this guy and even I'm gonna take the solenoid off just like I did that guy so then I can just go ahead and put the top the diaphragm back on put the six screws back in and then go ahead and use my existing solenoids and screw right into the top of this guy and I don't even have to do any wiring so quick easy for motor repair of a Rain Bird sprinkler valve okay I've got the top off my new valve it's sitting there ready to go and I've got my new diaphragm brand-new you can see here's where the solenoid goes sees a little two pins right here these two gray pins that's where these two little holes are gonna go so we just go ahead and take that for a second and go ahead and set that down on there and again I'm gonna show you where it lines up where those pins are you want to make sure that you set it on there to where those pins line up and then just try to line up your screw holes as best you can and then we're gonna take the top again the solenoid part of it is the round part where the electrical cell enoyed goes faces towards those two little holes so we're gonna go ahead and put that on next and just lightly set that down on there and then we're gonna go ahead and push it down and now we're ready to go ahead and hold it with one hand and tighten the screws one tip I didn't tell you is when you're trying to take these six screws out you saw when I took the valve apart I took the solenoid off first then took the six screws out when you do the new valve and you're taking the top off your brand new valve to put on here just get your celadon off and take it out of the way just set it over here off to the side where it's not in your way so you can get these screws out without any kind of a challenge all right so we're pretty close to being done here now if your parents never taught you how to change a tire on a car you know how you loosen the lug nuts you go from here to here from there to there and there to there you crisscross when you're tightening do the same thing when you're tightening screws on here somebody asked me the other day well can I use a screw gun or a drill to take these screws out you can but you just need to be really careful you don't strip them or over-tighten them this is just all plastic stuff here so again I tighten this guy first over to this side tighten that guy next and just don't get carried away even if your heck is strong just take your time just lightly Snug them down okay and always tighten them later if they leak a little bit again you can see we're just going kind of crisscross and pattern here we're almost done here without me you having to do a lot of explaining next time when you're doing it yourself we're gonna go criss cross then we're gonna go back over here we're just double check and make sure everybody stuck tightening this guy again we're just double checking everybody just to make sure everybody's nice and snug now that we got them all down okay now that we're done with that part we can take our existing solenoid always recommend taking a little bit of spit put it on your finger and there's an o-ring right here you can see an o-ring right here we're gonna get that wet it's gonna give me just a second I'll do that real quick and then we're gonna go ahead and thread it back in there just set it down in there and then go ahead and start threading it back in there and again don't get carried away just lightly tighten that thing down to where it snug make sure the bleed screws nice and snug again double check or breaker lid make sure that snug you've now successfully and if you even want to you can put this guy back on has a little notch here on the back for the wires and that's back on it as well so all we got left to do is nice and easy we're gonna turn this on ever so slowly that's always a good idea to go slow you can hear them pressuring up this is the valve starting to come on that's normal for it to leak when you first turn it on because it has to hit at least 15 psi in order to be able to shut off so again we're gonna loosen it a little bit and make sure it's nice and tight so if your sprinklers are on I didn't have it quite tight enough so behind me my lawn sprinkler started to come on so again I just kind of loosened it up a little bit like this and then lightly snugged it down and then you can hear goes off we're all done so that's how you replace the top on a Rain Bird sprinkler valve one cool thing I'm going to point out to you a lot of people don't know is on a Rain Bird valve both halves on here the only time it matters whether you're buying a one inch or a 3/4 inch valve and you can see the size of it right here on the lid this is what it's upside down this is one zero zero that stands for a one inch valve so or no that breaker lids off of one inch valve if you look down here it's on a three quarter inch pipe so the cool thing about it when I'm trying to explain to you is you go to Lowe's or Home Depot Ace Hardware wherever you need to go to get a Rain Bird valve it doesn't matter if you're just gonna swap the tops on the valve it does not matter what size valve you buy so you might as well buy the more inexpensive 3/4 inch rather than buying a one inch today just for purposes of the demonstration I wanted to show you that even though you have a three-quarter inch body the tops off of a 1 inch valve so you can see one inch mouth see how big the holes are a lot bigger than a 3/4 I don't need any of that I'm not gluing anything if I was gonna replace the valve and glue everything on and use new male adapters these little guys down here then yeah it matters what size valve you buy [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Gary's Sprinkler Repair

Views: 348,497

Keywords: Fix, Sprinkler, Valve, Bad, irrigation, Howto, DIY, Fixing a sprinkler valve, sprinkler valves, sprinkle, do it yourself repairs, home fixes, quick fixes, easy, easy sprinkler repair, repair, easy sprinkler valve repair

Id: J0--hHR8SKw

Length: 13min 41sec (821 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 09 2018